Turkey’s
future is to be decided by the nation's three most powerful men, by the
equilibrium they shape among themselves and by deals they forge with each
other.
The
first and the most powerful is already at the zenith of political power: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He is also the most powerful, most capable civilian leader after the founder of
the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. His colleagues who know from his
younger days speak of him as “reis,” [''president'' in formal usage and
''chief'' colloquially]. The people who joined him at his current post call him
“patron” [the boss]. In official bureaucratic milieu, among party members and
businessmen close to him he is “beyefendi” [sir or esquire]. Not only is he the
most powerful man of Turkey, but because he enjoys exercising his power and
doesn’t want to share it with anyone else, he is a personality that instills
fear in his party AKP, in the state structure and the society.
The
second most powerful man is serving a life sentence and has been in prison for
14 years: Abdullah Ocalan, who
founded the separatist, armed Kurdish organization, the Kurdistan Workers Party
[PKK] in 1978 and who personally led it until 1999 when he was apprehended in
Kenya and handed over to Turkey. Since his imprisonment the PKK has changed
drastically. The Kurdish issue became politicized and regionalized and has
become a mass movement. Among many political and societal variables the key
issue that hasn’t changed in the Kurdish movement has been the loyalty to
Ocalan’s historical leadership. This is why the Kurds close to the PKK say
“Honorable Ocalan’’ or in brief “the Leadership” when they speak of him. Ocalan
is a figure that unites Kurdish nationalists.
The
AKP rule and their media use a code for Ocalan that is derived from the name of
the island where his private prison is: Imrali.
Those
in the power, to avoid perceptions that they are in a dialogue with Ocalan
through intelligence officials, refrain from using his name and prefer to say
“Imrali.”
The
third powerful man is a Sunni religious leader living in voluntary exile in the
United States for 14 years: Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, who
started out as a mosque imam, is the founder of an Islamic socio-political
movement that is now spread worldwide. He is its spiritual leader. The movement
has several labels: “Gulen Movement,” “Service” or the most popular version in
Turkey, “Cemaat” [a congregation or faith community]. Their followers are known
as “Gulenists.” Those who admire Fethullah Gulen call him “hocaefendi” [a
scholar esquire].
Those
who don’t like him call him ‘’Pennsylvania’’ after the state he moved to in
1999 when he left Turkey because of military pressure. Some call him “Across
the Ocean.”
The
main engine of the Gulen Movement that has long become globalized is education.
They have close to 1,000 schools in more than 120 countries, including
universities.
In
Turkey they have a nationwide school and student hostel network with tens of
thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of students. Vast majority of
their students are on scholarships. The revenues that turns the wheels come
from their capitalist ventures and donations collected by a network of
organizations of powerful businessmen. The movement also has a strong media
network with daily Zaman and Samanyolu TV channels as its flag ships.
But
the most extraordinary political power attributed to the Gulen Movement is the
network it has reportedly built inside the state mechanism, especially in
judiciary and security sectors.
Today,
many impartial observers agree that the current neo-Islamist rule of Turkey has
been able to eliminate in just three years the military-bureaucratic tutelage
power centers that saw themselves as the guardians of the Ataturk Republic with
police actions and judicial procedures mainly thanks to harmonious work of the
Gulenist cadres in the police and the judiciary.
Although
their statures are widely divergent, there are commonalities in the leaderships
of Erdogan, Gulen and Ocalan that render them powerful and consequential.
All
three are extremely charismatic, all three have exceptional influence on their
constituencies, all three are visionaries and finally all three have
alternative societal projects. All three with their visions and leaderships
carried changes they brought about to outside of Turkish borders.
And
there is no fourth man who has similar attributes.
Until
recent past, chiefs of general staff used to be counted among the powerful
figures of the land but not anymore. Turkey has changed and will change more.
The
change in Turkey now proceeds on two axes: Erdogan’s overly personalized
authoritarian president project, and peace with the Kurdish movement.
What
Turkey’s new regime will look like and status of Turkey’s relations with the
Kurdish reality in the Middle East will largely be determined by the
interaction between these two axes.
To
make is clearer and more concrete we must say this: Although there was no
cause-and-effect relationship, the a la carte presidential model Erdogan wants
for himself and settlement of the Kurdish issue became linked to the peace
negotiations at Imrali. Despite efforts to keep them under wraps, it is now
known that the negotiations between Turkish intelligence officials who
represented Erdogan’s authority and Ocalan have been going on since last
October.
The
negotiation platform of a “new constitution” on which the presidential system and
peace issues were debated was in a format of give-and-take.
For
the presidential system Erdogan desires, a constitutional amendment is required
as well as for the settlement of the Kurdish issue. To meet the equality
demands of the Kurds a neutral definition of citizenship that doesn’t require
“Turkishness,” education in the mother tongue and partially fulfilling the
demand for autonomy by empowering local administrations are all required
constitutional adjustments.
If
progress is wanted in the peace process, then the constitution has to be
amended to meet these Kurdish demands. Erdogan’s AKP doesn’t have enough
parliamentary seats to submit a constitutional draft to a public vote. AKP can
negotiate only with the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party [BDP] for a
presidential system. Other parties are categorically refusing to negotiate for
such a system.
A
reality emerged when the daily Milliyet on Feb. 28 published the minutes
of the meeting three BDP parliamentarians held with Ocalan at Imrali a few days
earlier. The topic of BDP supporting the presidential system was on the agenda
of the Imrali meeting and Ocalan, despite some reservations, was amenable to
support Erdogan’s presidency.
Nevertheless,
it will not be easy for the Erdogan government to market a "AKP-BDP
constitution” to majority nationalist conservative Turkish public unless the
PKK military forces leave Turkey before a possible constitutional referandum in
the fall and for Turkey’s 30-year terror question to be considered as done with.
An
interesting feature of the “’Imrali Minutes” report was the harsh accusations
of Ocalan against the Gulen Movement. Ocalan claimed the summons by the
specially authorized prosecutor of Hakan Fidan, the undersecretary of National
Intelligence Organization for questioning on Feb. 7, 2012, was “”actually a
coup attempt” and implied it was the Gulen Movement behind it. Ocalan went as
far as to claim that the objective of the summons was to arrest the prime
minister on charges of treason and labeled the Gulen Movement as new
“counter-guerrilla.”
We
will perhaps understand better in the future why Ocalan made such severe
accusations against the Gulen Movement. The Gulen media since 2009, especially
after 2011, have been increasingly supportive of police operations that
resulted in arrests of thousands of Kurdish activists, there has been a
perceptible antipathy against the Gulen Movement in Kurdish public opinion. But
this is not enough to explain Ocalan’s outburst.
What
is definite is this: The crisis that began Feb. 7, 2012, with the summons for
questioning of Hakan Fidan, the MIT undersecretary who happens to be one
bureaucrat Erdogan trusts most, culminated in ending the de facto partnership
for power between the Gulen Movement and the AKP.
It
is true that the Gulen Movement, with its media assets, its undeniable
influence over conservative voters and its potential power within the state, is
a key actor. But what is apparent is that the movement has not yet decided its
final position on Erdogan’s presidency and the peace process with the PKK and
that they are somewhat undecided with these issues.
The
Gulen Movement has adequate power to influence these processes this or that way
once it makes up its mind.
The
clarification of the interaction among “the three” also depends on the Gulen
Movement to determine its inclination.
Kadri Gürsel is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor's
Turkey Pulse and has written a column for the Turkish daily Milliyet
since 2007. He focuses primarily on Turkish foreign policy, international
affairs and Turkey’s Kurdish question, as well as Turkey’s evolving political
Islam. He joined the Milliyet publishing group in 1997 as vice
editor-in-chief of a newly launched weekly news magazine, Artı-Haber,
and was Milliyet’s foreign news editor from 1999 until 2008. Gürsel was
also a correspondent for Agence France-Presse between 1993 and 1997,
and in 1995 was kidnapped by the PKK, an experience he recounted in his book Dağdakiler
(Those of the Mountains), published in 1996. He is also chairman of the
Turkish National Committee of the International
Press Institute.
